Early civilizations were heavily influenced by water. So naturally soap was around in some form during those ages. Records show that the Egyptians bathed regularly. Some say that Moses gave the Israelites detailed laws on cleanliness using ashes and oil to make some sort of soap. In classical times perfumed oils mixed with clay were used for bathing. Boiling fat with ashes and a natural plant base like lye is the stem for how we make soap today.
Both solid dry lye and lye solutions are corrosive and will degrade organic tissue. Lye used to be among the many different alkalis taken from hardwood ashes. Now, lye is commercially manufactured using a membrane cell method, and is the main ingredient in soap making. Lye is also known as Sodium Hydroxide. When sodium hydroxide mixes with oil or fat it make soap.
The purpose of our lab was to determine the differences in making soap out of coconut and olive oil.
Procedure
First we put 255 grams of the first oil (coconut oil) into a 2000 ml and heated it with a Bunsen burner until it got to the boiling point of water (100 degrees C). When the temperature got to 100 degrees Celsius, we turned the heat off and added an equal amount of water as oil to the 2000 ml beaker. We then brought the mixture to a boil, turned the heat off and covered the top of the beaker with aluminum foil to let it sit over night. We then repeated all the steps replacing the coconut oil with olive oil.
After letting both solutions sit over night, we separated the oil and the water in the solutions and discarded the water. We then mixed 75 ml of water and 35 grams of Sodium Hydroxide in a 2000 ml beaker and stirred the mixture until the Sodium Hydroxide had dissolved. Once the water dissolved the Sodium Hydroxide, we slowly added the oil while constantly stirring. When the solution was all mixed we added 50 ml of lemon juice and essential oil from roses. As our last step we put both solutions into a refrigerator and left it for just under an hour.
Results
After letting the soap sit in the regrigerater, the beaker with the coconut oil was mostly liquid with a little oily solid that wasn't bubbly like soap that smelled like the rose extract. The beaker with the olive oil in it had a thick layer of olive oil on the surface and on the bottom, there was a thick yellow white goupy liquid. After the procedure we noticed that our soap was not turning into a hard, firm, or thick solid. It was more of a liquid soap, you can say, for both oils. In the olive oil beaker, the result color turned into a “pea soup” color. In the coconut oil beaker, the final result color turned into a orange juice color. Both beakers were an oily liquid. As a team, we believe that our results came out to be this way because on a certain step in our procedure (step 8) we could have waited a little longer and let the liquid sit a little longer before moving onto step 9. This is because the sodium hydroxide and oil may not have completely reacted before we added the lemon juice. The sodium hydroxide and oil mix should have formed the soap. We decided to put both beakers into a refrigerated location, hoping this choice will change our results from a liquid to a solid over the course of approximately an hour.
Conclusions
From this experiment we can conclude that coconut oil makes better soap than soap made with olive oil because it formed soap and eventually formed in to a solid, which the olive oil did not. In order to make this experiment work better, others might try to wait a few minutes before adding the lemon juice to the water, sodium hydroxide, and oil mix. They might also try to alter the amount of the oils used to get a less oily product.
References
Hunt, PhD, FRPharmS, John A. "A short history of soap." The Pharmaceutical Journal. 18 Dec. 1999. PJ. inc. 2 June 2009 <ttp:www.pharmj.com/Editorial/19991218/articles/soap.html>
How to Make Soap//. 2009
Anne Marie Helmenstine, Ph.D., About.com
June 3rd 2009. http://chemistry.about.com/cs/howtos/ht/makesoap.htm
Table of Contents
Coconut and Olive Soap
Noah, Jordan, Courtney
Introduction
Early civilizations were heavily influenced by water. So naturally soap was around in some form during those ages. Records show that the Egyptians bathed regularly. Some say that Moses gave the Israelites detailed laws on cleanliness using ashes and oil to make some sort of soap. In classical times perfumed oils mixed with clay were used for bathing. Boiling fat with ashes and a natural plant base like lye is the stem for how we make soap today.Both solid dry lye and lye solutions are corrosive and will degrade organic tissue. Lye used to be among the many different alkalis taken from hardwood ashes. Now, lye is commercially manufactured using a membrane cell method, and is the main ingredient in soap making. Lye is also known as Sodium Hydroxide. When sodium hydroxide mixes with oil or fat it make soap.
The purpose of our lab was to determine the differences in making soap out of coconut and olive oil.
Procedure
First we put 255 grams of the first oil (coconut oil) into a 2000 ml and heated it with a Bunsen burner until it got to the boiling point of water (100 degrees C). When the temperature got to 100 degrees Celsius, we turned the heat off and added an equal amount of water as oil to the 2000 ml beaker. We then brought the mixture to a boil, turned the heat off and covered the top of the beaker with aluminum foil to let it sit over night. We then repeated all the steps replacing the coconut oil with olive oil.
After letting both solutions sit over night, we separated the oil and the water in the solutions and discarded the water. We then mixed 75 ml of water and 35 grams of Sodium Hydroxide in a 2000 ml beaker and stirred the mixture until the Sodium Hydroxide had dissolved. Once the water dissolved the Sodium Hydroxide, we slowly added the oil while constantly stirring. When the solution was all mixed we added 50 ml of lemon juice and essential oil from roses. As our last step we put both solutions into a refrigerator and left it for just under an hour.
Results
After letting the soap sit in the regrigerater, the beaker with the coconut oil was mostly liquid with a little oily solid that wasn't bubbly like soap that smelled like the rose extract. The beaker with the olive oil in it had a thick layer of olive oil on the surface and on the bottom, there was a thick yellow white goupy liquid. After the procedure we noticed that our soap was not turning into a hard, firm, or thick solid. It was more of a liquid soap, you can say, for both oils. In the olive oil beaker, the result color turned into a “pea soup” color. In the coconut oil beaker, the final result color turned into a orange juice color. Both beakers were an oily liquid. As a team, we believe that our results came out to be this way because on a certain step in our procedure (step 8) we could have waited a little longer and let the liquid sit a little longer before moving onto step 9. This is because the sodium hydroxide and oil may not have completely reacted before we added the lemon juice. The sodium hydroxide and oil mix should have formed the soap. We decided to put both beakers into a refrigerated location, hoping this choice will change our results from a liquid to a solid over the course of approximately an hour.
Conclusions
From this experiment we can conclude that coconut oil makes better soap than soap made with olive oil because it formed soap and eventually formed in to a solid, which the olive oil did not. In order to make this experiment work better, others might try to wait a few minutes before adding the lemon juice to the water, sodium hydroxide, and oil mix. They might also try to alter the amount of the oils used to get a less oily product.
References
Hunt, PhD, FRPharmS, John A. "A short history of soap." The Pharmaceutical Journal. 18 Dec. 1999. PJ. inc. 2 June 2009 <ttp:www.pharmj.com/Editorial/19991218/articles/soap.html>How to Make Soap//. 2009
Anne Marie Helmenstine, Ph.D., About.com
June 3rd 2009.
http://chemistry.about.com/cs/howtos/ht/makesoap.htm